1 Chronicles 22:1-23:32, Romans 3:9-31, Psalms 12:1-8, Proverbs 19:13-14
Today is the 16th day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian how are you today? I hope everything is well. Things are pretty well here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. I guess we’re facing all the same kinda struggles everybody else does in their daily lives and that’s one of the reasons why we come here, why we center ourselves in God’s word, why we step away for just a few minutes to re-center ourselves in who we are because we are in relationship with our heavenly Father and we seek direction in our lives through His word. So, we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week and we’re working our way into the end of first Chronicles. We’ll actually conclude first Chronicles before we conclude this week but we’re not there yet. So, let’s set with stay here where we are. First Chronicles chapter 22 and 23 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we work our way through the apostle Paul’s letters this year we’re going to find, as I’ve already mentioned, he’s fairly direct and at times the implications of what he’s saying are so astounding that it’s truly like mind-boggling me. I mean, there are things that the apostle Paul says that, if they are true, and I believe they are true, then you have to start wondering, “why do most believers not live as if they are true?” And we’ll also see why people were so upset with Paul. We go through the book of Acts or whatever and we see Paul’s ministry, and we’re like, “what’s the problem here? Like, why would people be so opposed to this guy enough to riot and to drag him out and beat him up and stone him and imprison him?” And we’ll see pretty clearly why that is. And we begin to see why that is in what he’s saying in the book of Romans today. So, we know Paul is a trained Pharisee, right, trained up in the Mosaic law and he is speaking about the Mosaic law today because, and we have got to get our minds around this, at the time Paul’s writing this there is nothing called a New Testament. Paul can’t say, “I’m referring to first Corinthians here, another letter that I wrote or I’m referring to the gospel of John here or I’m referring to James letter here.” These things have not been cohesively collected into something that we would call the New Testament. So, the Bible, if there were a thing called the Bible at this time would be the Torah, the law and then other writings called the prophets - the law and the prophets. People had put their faith in the law and in trying to perfectly obey the law, especially a person like a trained Pharisee like Saul or Paul. Paul’s reached a place where he realizes you cannot get there from here, nobody can obey the law perfectly. So, that must not be the way to become righteous before God. There must be a different purpose. And, so, Paul says, “no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.” So, now we can understand where Paul’s coming from but you hear this in the first century, when you don’t have Christian faith and you don’t have a New Testament and your thinking, “what are you talking…what you’re saying here?” Right? It’s very disruptive. And that’s when Paul goes on to say, “look, God’s shown us a way to be made right with Him without keeping the requirements of the law. This is promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets. Like this is not new news. This has been a thing that’s been promised. We’re made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everybody in the world, everybody who believes it, no matter who they are, no matter who they are, no matter who they are friends, no matter who they are.” That is like a centerpiece of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, it would…it would seem that the people…the people who believe and have fallen in love with Jesus Christ would not forget that and maybe would stop condemning each other, would stop living into the stereotype about us, that we’re the judgmental ones, we’re the condemning ones as opposed to that we are known by our love for one another. What Paul is trying to lay out here as he will continue to lay out as we go through this letter is that you don’t deserve to be here. You do not deserve to become a child of God. Nobody deserves that. But rather than me paraphrasing, let me just read it from Paul’s letter. “Can we boast then that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No! Our acquittal isn’t based on obeying the law, it’s based on faith. We’re made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law.” So, we are all citizens of some nation, right, the nation we were born in or the nation that we immigrated to. We…most of us…are citizens of somewhere. We are expected to obey the laws of the place that we are. That’s how society is held together, but if we obey those laws more and more perfectly, we are not more and more of a citizen. We are a citizen. That’s that. If we break the laws of our land we will…we will likely pay the fine or the penalty depending on what it is that’s happened but we’re still a citizen. Like here in the United States, pretty hard to lose your citizenship. You could commit treason and be found guilty of that and lose your citizenship, but maybe you’re seeing the point here. Why is it that we are obsessing over sin management and trying to figure out how to obey the rules or better yet, trying to figure out how to get everybody else to obey the rules while applying full grace to ourselves so that we can appreciate citizenship of the kingdom of God when it’s a done deal? So, I feel like we could go on for hours talking about this, but we will. We will over time. This is kind of where we…where we end today because this is kind of where our reading ends today. But we should take that as a gift because as we go through all of these letters and we and we explore their implications day by day it gives us a chance to little by little grow in our understanding and reshape and reframe what it is that we think that we know and what it is that were doing.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father. We love You and we thank You for Your kindness and we thank You for Your long-suffering and we admit, I admit, I’ve been trying my very best to figure out how to do it right as a way to honor You and to live into this faith completely and yet it’s not possible, not even for one day. And, so, as much stress and anxiety as that can bring up in our lives, we should rest in the fact that we are Your children and all that we have to do is believe that and just allow that knowledge and allow that awareness, that reality, to change us over the course of our lives. Come Holy Spirit. We keep trying to get the formula right, we keep trying to get the recipe right, we keep trying to find out just what it is exactly we’re supposed to do to make this work perfect. We’re trying to obey the law, and nobody’s been able to do that except Jesus and only through him do we have any hope. Let this sink in deeply, Holy Spirit, pray today in Your name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website and, of course, that’s home base, and that’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and stay connected.
The Daily Audio Bible Family Reunion for 2019 is coming up It’s coming up August 31st through September 2nd and that’s we’re refocusing some of our attention now. Inviting you here to the rolling hills of Tennessee into the Nashville area, which is…which is a thing unto itself. Such beauty in this part of the world but we’re all getting together and coming into community together to spend some time together to stop knowing each other only by voice, but to get to know some of those voices, to get to see some of those voices, take the story deeper so that as we continue to hear those voices over the years to come we say, “that’s my sister, that’s my brother. I met them.” And we pray for each other more intentionally, deepen the community. And we’re looking forward to it. We’re actually anticipating it a lot because we gonna be taking a break after this. And, so, we’re really looking forward to being in community together. And when I say a break, I don’t mean like we’re taking a break, like the Daily Audio Bible’s going to disappear. But just from the continual travel, the continual events that are…that are always with us and take months to prepare for. We’re gonna be taking a little bit of a break from that in 2020. And, so, we’re really looking forward to this Family Reunion. It’s gonna be a special time. So, you can find out all the details at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section. Just look for a Family Reunion 2019. You can get all the details, where it is, what it looks like. There are a handful of cabins still on the grounds available. Those guys are as big as a house. They’re set up more like a bunkhouse but they have their own bathrooms and showers and everything inside and its right on the grounds and the grounds are right on the lake and there’s just a lot to do. It’s very beautiful. So, hopefully you can come. I said the Initiatives section at dailyaudiobible.com. You can also find that on the app. Pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner will take you to the Initiatives section. So, hope to see you August 31st.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link, it lives on the homepage. And I can’t thank you enough and that’s the truth, that’s just being honest, I can’t thank you enough for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.
And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253, is the number to dial.
And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.